The real bug is any O/S stupid enough to be designed to automatically execute things on media when loaded. That's a remarkably stupid design.
Yes it is, which is why Vista now asks what the user what they want to do when media containing an AUTORUN.INF is detected, even when it comes to loading executables. Of course, Vista is way too bloated to be put on an EEE but at least Microsoft dealt with such a flaw. Just putting it out there.
A big black rectangle is UGLY. Since blurring things looks a lot nicer, the media tends to prefer it. Image is everything, even in the modification of such.:)
only register and vote if you have an intelligent vote to cast!
While in many ways I'd prefer it not to be so, I have to disagree with your suggestion for one simple reason:
Democracy is such that everyone has the right to have their say and make their vote, even if it's an "unintelligent" vote. That's one of the core fundamentals of democracy, and you can't deny someone their right even if it's based on misinformation or dodgy logic. Otherwise... it isn't democracy, it's something else.
The pirated copy of the content would have had cracked whatever copy protection/DRM existed. Now, this circumvention is going to be illegal since virtually all EULAs disallow reverse engineering (ignoring the legally of EULAs for a moment). Although the end-user probably didn't create the cracks themselves, by using said cracks, the violation of the EULAs is extended to them since they are knowingly using pirated/circumvented software. Hence, even though you would have bought the legit version, using illegal content in the form of cracks is not going to go down very well, even if the contact is inaccessible WITHOUT the crack.
I could be wrong, I probably am wrong when compared to the laws of various countries, but since everything has been made so confusing and complicated for games, fucking GAMES of all things, it's this bullshit which makes me less interested in even bothering with modern commercial games.
Keep in mind though that we have to service the entire country's Internet access to the rest of the world (where all the good stuff is anyway) through a limited bunch of cables on the sea floor. It's not the cheapest thing in the world, and because we aren't as physical interconnected with all the major sites as some others are in the rest of the world, there is some basis for the extra costs involved. Then again there's a whole story about how almost all of our infrastructure is controlled by one company (Telstra), so the monopoly angle doesn't help much.
As for TV, well there's a reason why our country ranks either 1st or 2nd card for the highest downloader of torrents of TV shows.:)
Carried to its logical extreme bandwidth metering can be pretty scary.
It might be scary if you aren't used to it. Then again, us Aussies are kinda used to it, so maybe we have an advantage when it comes to working with metered bandwidth.;)
A few points though - Flash heavy ads? Use Adblock Plus. Computer gets a virus and acts as a spambot? A good ISP would be able to detect such abuse with your email account and deal with it at their end at the very least. Windows updates? Critical updates are never as large as 500MB, only the service packs which are few and far between (ie. nothing major in the grand scheme of things). WoW updates? A lot of Australian ISPs have a pool of un-metered content that members of the ISP can download without increasing their usage quota. Internode for example has a games repository which includes... the latest WoW patches, among other things.
Point is, we've dealt with metered bandwidth for ages, and although it's annoying, it's not as "scary" as you're suggesting. UNLESS of course you've never had to deal with such limitations before, in which case I'll watch the anarchy with amusement.
Let it check, then click on Preferences, disable the "Automatically check for Adobe updates" checkbox
Of course, I've noticed many supposed geeks rant about such thing instead of actually getting in there and working out how to fix the issue. Instead of simply finding the option to change in an existing program, they instead just move to another program or even worse, change operating systems instead of actually spending some time doing a little poking around/research.
The version of VLC that is available in the official Ubuntu repositories does NOT have the necessary codec to go along with it, for legal reasons. To enable support for encrypted DVDs (i.e. the ones people want to watch), you need to install libdvdcss2 from something like Medibuntu, which is the whole issue due to its questionable legality. The alternative is to download and compile VLC themselves from the main Videolan site, but that takes even more work.
Microsoft doesn't like to lose, and they will do ANYTHING to win. That doesn't necessarily translate to better products of course.
Just because they've been caught with their pants down regarding the emergence of netbooks/sub-notebooks, doesn't mean they won't find a way to dominate there as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Release date is still TBA.
Linux support is almost certainly non-existent, officially at least. Might be able to run it through WINE.
Yes it is, which is why Vista now asks what the user what they want to do when media containing an AUTORUN.INF is detected, even when it comes to loading executables. Of course, Vista is way too bloated to be put on an EEE but at least Microsoft dealt with such a flaw. Just putting it out there.
Why was I marked flamebait? Did I disrespect GIMP ANYWHERE in my post?
Fucking kids.
Where's the comments complaining about how they didn't find a similar way to do this in GIMP?
Or maybe they did, but it's not here. Not that I can tell from a 500 sever error. :)
A big black rectangle is UGLY. Since blurring things looks a lot nicer, the media tends to prefer it. Image is everything, even in the modification of such. :)
While in many ways I'd prefer it not to be so, I have to disagree with your suggestion for one simple reason:
Democracy is such that everyone has the right to have their say and make their vote, even if it's an "unintelligent" vote. That's one of the core fundamentals of democracy, and you can't deny someone their right even if it's based on misinformation or dodgy logic. Otherwise... it isn't democracy, it's something else.
Stop bring logic and rational thought into a Slashdot rant you bastard!
I look at it with this logic (IANAL):
The pirated copy of the content would have had cracked whatever copy protection/DRM existed. Now, this circumvention is going to be illegal since virtually all EULAs disallow reverse engineering (ignoring the legally of EULAs for a moment). Although the end-user probably didn't create the cracks themselves, by using said cracks, the violation of the EULAs is extended to them since they are knowingly using pirated/circumvented software. Hence, even though you would have bought the legit version, using illegal content in the form of cracks is not going to go down very well, even if the contact is inaccessible WITHOUT the crack.
I could be wrong, I probably am wrong when compared to the laws of various countries, but since everything has been made so confusing and complicated for games, fucking GAMES of all things, it's this bullshit which makes me less interested in even bothering with modern commercial games.
Keep in mind though that we have to service the entire country's Internet access to the rest of the world (where all the good stuff is anyway) through a limited bunch of cables on the sea floor. It's not the cheapest thing in the world, and because we aren't as physical interconnected with all the major sites as some others are in the rest of the world, there is some basis for the extra costs involved. Then again there's a whole story about how almost all of our infrastructure is controlled by one company (Telstra), so the monopoly angle doesn't help much.
As for TV, well there's a reason why our country ranks either 1st or 2nd card for the highest downloader of torrents of TV shows. :)
It might be scary if you aren't used to it. Then again, us Aussies are kinda used to it, so maybe we have an advantage when it comes to working with metered bandwidth. ;)
A few points though - Flash heavy ads? Use Adblock Plus. Computer gets a virus and acts as a spambot? A good ISP would be able to detect such abuse with your email account and deal with it at their end at the very least. Windows updates? Critical updates are never as large as 500MB, only the service packs which are few and far between (ie. nothing major in the grand scheme of things). WoW updates? A lot of Australian ISPs have a pool of un-metered content that members of the ISP can download without increasing their usage quota. Internode for example has a games repository which includes... the latest WoW patches, among other things.
Point is, we've dealt with metered bandwidth for ages, and although it's annoying, it's not as "scary" as you're suggesting. UNLESS of course you've never had to deal with such limitations before, in which case I'll watch the anarchy with amusement.
I disagree. I can provide a better artist's impression: :D
Why didn't you disable the auto-update?
Run Acrobat -> Help menu -> Check for updates
Let it check, then click on Preferences, disable the "Automatically check for Adobe updates" checkbox
Of course, I've noticed many supposed geeks rant about such thing instead of actually getting in there and working out how to fix the issue. Instead of simply finding the option to change in an existing program, they instead just move to another program or even worse, change operating systems instead of actually spending some time doing a little poking around/research.
Heh. Your DOOM reference was marked "Informative" rather than "Funny". I think certain Slashdotters need to step away from the computer. :)
The version of VLC that is available in the official Ubuntu repositories does NOT have the necessary codec to go along with it, for legal reasons. To enable support for encrypted DVDs (i.e. the ones people want to watch), you need to install libdvdcss2 from something like Medibuntu, which is the whole issue due to its questionable legality. The alternative is to download and compile VLC themselves from the main Videolan site, but that takes even more work.
Ah damn, sorry you're right. Oh well. Why do they do that anyway, have the answers when linked from google?
Hey! Experts exchange isn't so bad once you realize you don't even have to pay to get answers.
Eg. http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/CPP/Q_22118650.html
Skip through the crap in the middle to make you think there's no actual solutions, and the solutions appear at the very bottom. Good work.
Microsoft doesn't like to lose, and they will do ANYTHING to win. That doesn't necessarily translate to better products of course.
Just because they've been caught with their pants down regarding the emergence of netbooks/sub-notebooks, doesn't mean they won't find a way to dominate there as well.